Fun Facts of the UCF High School Programming Tournament
UCF has held the High School Programming Tournament annually since the first one in 1987. Here we have collected some of the fun facts about the contest.
- A character named "Ali" has existed in every problem set since 1996 except for one year. The problem set at the 1997 contest was missed; however, Ali appeared twice in 2008.
- Ever wonder how we choose the ordering of the problems in our sets? Well, each year the Chief Judge tries to form a sentence out of the filenames of the problems. Some years come out better than others, though.
- The judges hold a game each year where they try to get the problem name and time of the first correct submission. "Price is Right" rules apply so it must be without going over! In the 2011 tournament, first-time judge John Boswell won it with "Tower" at 5 minutes!
- Each year the judges give a number of "special awards" to teams that did something of note. In the 2011 tournament, we gave them to
- Land O' Lakes and Montverde Academy for their first attendance of our competition,
- The "Matt in the Hat" award to Miami Palmetto for being the first to solve the Ice Mice problem,
- Timber Creek High School for their "It Compiles...Submit it!" t-shirts, and
- Florida Virtual #2 for their genetic mutation submission on the Base-ic Genetics problem.
